lunedì 6 gennaio 2014

The Eurasian organized crime in Italy

In the continuous search of evolutive symptoms of the phenomena of organized
crime should certainly be followed and understood the modus operandi of criminal
organizations in that it tends to expand.
This activity is relatively easy when it regards criminal organizations that
have a culture
similar to our own and that move within the same nation because,
of course, the keys to comprehension are known and therefore of quick access to
the interpretation of events.

Is quite another
thing, especially in the early stages, the most important, to acquire the
interpretative means of behaviors of criminal communities that comes from
differents cultures and experiences unknown to us.

Today I'll take care of the
Eurasian organized crime, term with which the academic world, but unfortunately
not yet the police, categorize the crime that comes from the area that once
encompassed the countries of the former USSR and its satellites, thanks to the
opportunity of converse at a distance with Prof. Mark Galeotti, one of the most
important worldwide scholar of the Russian-speaking criminal world, which
recently posted on its blog-in Moscow's Shadows-a post titled: The other Greek tragedy readable at

This is the timely exposure
of a series of facts and clarifying considerations, so for this important, of
how Greece, in the last twenty years, has suffered and continues to suffer, the
penetration of its territory and activity of the Russian mafia, in its broadest
sense.

Regarding more
closely my work of understanding the clues in Italy regarding the penetration
of Eurasian criminal organizations, I will treat here, in particular the
Georgian criminality that, as evidenced by Mark Galeotti, certainly occupies a
level of absolute importance in delinquent Russian-speaking world. Starting
immediately from the result of my studies, we can say that the presence of
Georgian criminality that exists in Italy is certainly not negligible in terms
of the crimes committed and reflects some common characteristics to those found
by the work of Galeotti as regards the situation in Greece, and other, very
important from the criminological point of view, certainly different.

The general
situation related to the presence and activities of foreign and Italian
organized crime in Italy can be summed up, for reasons of synthesis, clarifying
that the criminal historical organization of the mafia-type, the Sicilian Mafia
and the Camorra of Campania continue to exercise control over their territories
of ancestral reference. The situation in Puglia, which is disrupted by
objective cultural inconsistency, although criminal, of the Sacra Corona Unita,
is pulviscular and fragmented with variegated criminal entities that are
competing for individual portions of territory. A different speech certainly
should be addressed in terms of the 'Ndrangheta in relation to criminal winning
model that allows 'ndranghetist organizations today to be the true Italian
criminal élite and, in many ways, worldwide. However, despite the strong
temptation, here we postpone it deferring to future works on this fascinating
subject from cultural and criminological point.

Returning to
foreign criminal organizations, they act on the Italian territory occupying the
empty spaces that the Italian ones, for various reasons, cannot or do not
consider it useful to fill. Obviously should be pointed out that any relevant
criminal activity on the part of foreign organizations must pay a pledge, under
variegated forms at the Italian ones.

With this
framework, we address the issue of Eurasian criminality in Italy.

Now the analysis of the
information available on open sources, OSINT (Open Source Intelligence),
integrates in a natural way the work of evaluation of indicators of a criminal
type in order to catch as soon as possible, the evolution of any criminal
phenomenon, known or unknown. This activity has allowed us to capture, in the
recent past, a significant increase in burglary committed by Georgian citizens,
evidence that it is certainly not escaped even the police who have completed
several investigations against as many Georgian criminals cells acting in
Lombardy, Piedmont and Lazio. The comparative reading of these police
activities gives us a clear picture of how these organizations act in national
and international level by resorting to the tactics of hit and run, like true
predators scoring a few hits in rapid succession and then change a city, region
or also the nation in order to circumvent any investigative effort.

However, there was
one episode in particular that drew attention, also mediatic, on this criminal
community in Italy: January 6, 2012, a Georgian citizen, TCHURADZE Revaz, was
shot with a pistol in Bari.

These two data, the
exponential increase of the crimes of theft committed by Georgian and this
murder, led to the interest of the authorities towards this phenomenon by
generating a series of investigations that, all in all in a short time, has
allowed us to delineate the operational framework of the Georgian mafia in
Italy.

The
first emerged datum regards the predatory nature of illegal activities
committed by Georgian criminality that, to date, represents a negligible threat
to public order, but this is characterized by a costant pervasiveness and
aggressiveness, reflecting situations of lawlessness already established in
other European countries.

In
recent times, in fact, the phenomenon has evolved more and more, in order to
overcome the measures of prevention and counteraction of the police forces and,
perhaps most importantly, in order to gain a stronger competitive compared to
other ethnic matrix organizations, as recently the Moldavian one. Increases, the ability of aggregation of simple
common criminals, organized by a leader, in order to create flexible and
structured cells through the associative model for the creation of specific
crimes

The research and its
analytic study highlight two aspects related to the prevailing presence of
citizens and criminals Georgian teams in Italy: a physiological presence of
immigrants who hides the presence of a strategic nature of organized crime in
Georgia.

The latter, in particular,
acts on two levels:
- tactical, resorting to a crime of its social impact such as burglary,
- strategic, more dangerous and as part of a broader objective to build a
network of relationships and logistics for future initiatives.

The
analytical work on the information obtained, mainly from open sources and
activities carried out by police forces, yet always in the light of personal
experience gained in many years of activity in contrast to these forms of
organized crime, it allows me to develop a scenario composite from which it can
be assumed that the Georgian crime in our country, is likely to further
evolution towards more complex and aggressive.

The
strengths of this criminal phenomenon, at least at this stage are to identify:
- in the low profile of the crimes perpetrated;

-
in the extreme mobility in the area;

-
in the use of a time-tested model criminal;

-
in the ethnic bond;

-
in the lack of antagonism with the crime indigenous

They
act as a safe opportunity for the realization of the criminal activity in
question, the use of:

-
The work done to the public by professionals in precious metals (Buy Gold),
criminalistic indicator in relation to the use of the proceeds for the purpose
of money laundering, wear and handling stolen goods.

This criminality is
certainly included in the category "migrated mafia groups", recently
defined by Anna Sergi and Anita Lavorgnas in the treatment "Types of
organized crime" - available on the Web

This category includes the offshoots of the
mafia-type criminal organizations transplanted into territories other than those
atavistic references, as is the case of the Georgian operating in Italy.

In essence, and in
consideration of the elements available to date, this form of ethnic
criminality while having the potential of branching in some areas of the country
do not seem to have the intention, featuring our modus operandi for extreme
mobility in the area not only Italian but also, and especially European, and in
so doing to thwart the efforts of the Police Forces contrast, however, in my
opinion, in the near future the evolution of the threat will depend largely
from international factors specifically related to drug trafficking .

So, It could soon be
realized a weld of interest between teams criminals Georgian, Albanian and
Italian especially in the management of the flow of cocaine and heroin from
countries of origin to the European consumer markets.

As is clear the analysis of
these phenomena is never a mere intellectual exercise but rather, and
especially in the contemporary, a necessary preparatory activity to an
understanding than ever anticipated and profound of phenomena that are
potentially intended to have an impact on the ordinate and peaceful civil
society.

The
Georgian criminality in Italy today represents for the police a secondary
threat, but as of now to have clear the evolutionary dynamics helps to frame
the phenomenon into perspective allowing the right choices depending on Crime.

The
Georgian criminality in Italy today represents for the police a secondary
threat, but as of now to have clear the evolutionary dynamics helps to frame
the phenomenon into the right perspective allowing the right choices in a
function anticrime.

Also in our country it
reverberates with violent aftermaths like the murder of Tchuradze Revaz goes to
show, the clash within the Georgian criminal community between the two clans of
Tbilisi and Kutaisi to the dominance of the Caucasian component in the Russian
criminal world.

This
situation, as outlined by other similar facts, is also shared by other European
countries such as Belgium, France, Spain, Germany and of course, as reminds us of Mark
Galeotti, Greece.

In this work, however, it
was not possible, for obvious necessity of synthesis, discuss a topic of secure
criminological and pragmatic interest from the investigative standpoint
relative to the tools of contrast to those phenomena, as this of Georgian
criminality which, while not having yet reached the threshold of criminal
liability request for mafia-type associations (cfr. Sergi – Lavorgna) , however they are not and
they do not act as mere criminal associations, presenting as of now some
typical aspects of the mafia.

It is this gap that in
essence is being exploited by some forms of organized crime in order to obtain
the best result with the least risk to its affiliates.

In Italy, some judge has
found a key to understanding
certainly shareable according to the writer that is use the aggravating due to
the transnational dimension, as required by the UN Convention on Transnational
Crime in Palermo, 2000, in charge of these organizations.

But this will be the subject of a forthcoming study.
My heartfelt thanks to the scholars mentioned by me.